While beauty, or capacity for pleasing the eye, may be very definitely said
to be the aim of ornamental art, it is difficult to arrive at a universal
standard as to what constitutes beauty. What pleases one person will not
always please another. The child loves glittering objects and gaudy
combinations, which the mature taste of the man declares extravagant and
unharmonious. Savages decorate their weapons, utensils, and their own
persons with ornaments that appear uncouth and barbarous to civilized
people.

Besides these differences in taste, which are due to different degrees of
mental development, and which can consequently be easily disposed of, we
find among highly civilized and cultured nations, at different periods, a
great diversity of tastes. These varying and sometimes apparently
conflicting products of ornamental art we designate as styles, viz.,
Egyptian style, Greek style, Gothic style, etc. So marked are the
differences between them that we can sometimes tell at a glance to what
period and to what style a small fragment of decoration belongs.

Notwithstanding these differences, which at first may appear very great, a
careful study of the best styles--those that achieved the greatest and most
lasting popularity--will reveal the fact that they are all based upon
certain fundamental laws and principles, and that all are good, bad, or
indifferent according as they conform to or violate these principles. These
essentials having been preserved, the opportunities for the exercise of
individual or national taste are almost boundless.

II. _Position of Ornament._--The position that ornament occupies is
necessarily a secondary one, as it cannot exist independently, but is
always applied to objects created for some purpose entirely independent of